But Not With You
by Ashen Key
Summary: In which Jake Sully discovers why Norm's been in a much better mood lately, and talks it over with Trudy Chacon. This doesn't mean he gets it, though. TrudyxNorm.


Sex. Jake remembered sex. He had dreams of sex. Not as many dreams as he did about running, sure, but he'd only been twenty-two when he'd ended up sprawled out in the street with a bullet in his spine. That bullet had ended a lot of things. Add in all that time he spent in cyro-sleep between here and Earth, and he hadn't had in sex in more than a decade.  
He tried not to think about that.

Sometimes, though, he could do nothing but. No sex, no jerking off, nothing but never-ending sexual frustration. And the women at Hell's Gate looked better than the women on Earth, too – healthier with the Pandoran food, hair shiny and skin clean from the lack of water shortages. Not that he had much time to look. The only women he really saw besides Augustine and Chacon were blue, and had tails, and that was a whole other ballgame. As for Augustine and Chacon, he'd spent enough time in the Marines to get used to not noticing the gender of his comrades. When the unit did everything together – sleep, shit, shower, _fight_ – they were all just Marines. Augustine clearly _wasn't_, but she acted so much like an officer it was easy to do the mental labelling. Chacon wore her hair civilian-long, but he saw the flightsuit and insignia first, ponytail noted only by the part of him that was still Recon.

No, Chacon was firmly _Marine_ in his mind, and thus (beyond the locker-room jokes that were part and parcel about being military) sexless. So, it was a shock to Jake in more ways than one when he wheeled his way out of Station 61's link-room to find Chacon and Norm making out on Norm's bunk.

Correct that: making out implies clothes. From what that blanket didn't cover, he didn't see clothes. He saw skin, and moving limbs, and Norm laughing, and he thought he saw Chacon roll her eyes as Norm pulled the blanket over them.

He was also fairly sure his mouth had fallen open, because when he heard a familiar, feminine (Chacon, _Trudy_ Chacon) laugh he snapped his mouth shut and pumped his way to his work-station.

Well, this was freaking awkward.

Augustine wasn't around, which made, you know, _sense_, but he couldn't do a video-log with those two getting busy in the background, and he'd appreciate the distraction. 

(Chacon and Norm were quieter than he remembered sex being, but maybe he and his partners – oh, god, what he wouldn't give to roll around with Nyree again – had just been loud.

Nah, they were being quiet.

Okay, he was thinking about this too much)

But as there was no Grace Augustine to snark at, and he couldn't talk to the camera, Jake grabbed the nearest book, opened it, and proceeded to ignore the pair.

Yep, totally ignoring.

Not paying any attention, at _all_.

Absolutely focused on the study on Pandoran beetles.

Yep.

(...this explained why Doc Spellman had been in a better mood lately, didn't it.)

A booted kick to his wheelchair broke him out of his determined ignoring.

"Hey, Marine," Chacon said, looking amused. "You got back early." Amused…wasn't the only way to describe her. She was back wearing her off-duty clothes, a singlet and loose pants like any other Marine, but her hair was out. It was longer than he thought it'd be (not that he'd thought about it), all thick black curls bouncing around her shoulders. _Messy_ curls. Which, you know, 'course they'd be messy. She had the look of a woman who'd been rolling around in bed for **hours**, and enjoying herself thoroughly in the process.

Which meant that his mind had (momentarily, goddamn it) stopped labelling her 'Marine' and started labelling her 'woman'. A highly attractive woman. Who'd just been having sex. With someone blatantly _not him_.

Fuck.

"Aw, thought you guys'd be missing me."

"Yeah," she said, taking a seat with a smirk tucked away in the corner of her smile, "sure you did." Her movements were languid, all cat lounging in the sun after eating the cream. Canary. Antelope. Whatever the damn saying was.

"Where, uh, where's Norm?"

"Havin' a shower. You were zoned out there for a while, Sully."

"Yeah, well, you were, I mean, I didn't want to, uh."

Chacon laughed, and he was relieved to note that it was the same evil cackle as before. "Oops," she said, not sounding a mite bit apologetic. "Like I said, you got back early."

"Didn't think I'd be interrupting anything," he said, and there was enough underlying bitterness in his voice for her eyebrows to shoot up.

Making a face, deliberately dubious, Chacon leaned over to thwap him lightly across the shoulder. "C'mon, you get to go run around in Na'vi bootcamp with Princess Jailbait. What you expect us to do, play Scrabble all damn day?"

Jake tried to ignore the way the way she smelt of sex. "Well, Chacon, I hadn't really thought about it," he said, smirking back in self-defence.

Her smile faded a little, growing sad in a way he hadn't expected. "Yeah, I guess you wouldn't."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning don't get lost in the woods, Corporal." It was a warning, but a friend's warning, a sister's warning. Don't get lost in the woods, don't get lost in dreams of blue and green when you have to wake up to grey.

But this **was** the dream-world, and Jake never did take well to warnings from dreams.

"I won't mention you're sleeping with the enemy in my next report."

"Shove it, Sully." Chacon ran her fingers through her hair (or tried to, only for her fingers to get caught in some knots).

"…oh, you actually _like_ him."

The look she gave him was flat; even tigers lounging in the sun have claws.

"_Damn_," he breathed out with something of a laugh. 

"What?" Still unfriendly. Right, he should start trying to repair that bridge.

"Well, he's, and you're-"

Chacon raised her eyebrows, but at least his determined verbal blundering had a smile teasing the edges of her (swollen – not thinking about that, not thinking about that) mouth. "We're what?"

"I don't see it."

"Then thank God you're not in charge of my love-life."

"No, seriously."

"Yeah, seriously. Thank God you're not in charge of my love-life." She snorted at his expression. "He's my type, I like him, he doesn't patronize the hell out of me like most do, and he has 1969 written in Braille on his cap."

"Because he has 1969 written in Braille on his cap," Jake repeated, slowly. "I don't get it."

Chacon just gave him a crooked smile. "And that's why I'm having sex with Norm and not you."

"Ouch."

She laughed and pulled herself out of the chair. "Now I'm gonna kick that geek of mine out of the shower so I can wash my hair. You boys play nice."

"Yes, ma'am," he said with a salute, and she laughed again as she returned it. And because Chacon was a sister-Marine, and a superior officer at that, Jake tried not to watch the roll of her hips as she sauntered off.

He did not, it should be said, try very hard.


End file.
